A. Field of Invention
This invention pertains to a method and system for providing interpreting services for various persons, including, for example, patients in a hospital, or other medical facility.
B. Description of the Prior Art
While the primary and official language in the United States is English, many people living here are fluent only in other languages. Frequently, these people have difficulty communicating in English at a time and place where exchanging information with others is crucial. For example, the inability to communicate is a serious problem for a patient in a hospital or other similar health care facility. Here, for obvious reasons, it is important that patients have the ability to communicate with a doctor or nurse.
In the past, this problem was addressed by providing a live interpreter at the facility. Of course, providing live interpreters is very expensive. Moreover, most facilities have limited space and, therefore, providing interpreters for more than two or three languages is just not practical, even for only a couple of hours a day.
One alternative system proposed by Deaf-Talk LLC of Pittsburgh, Pa., consisted of a two-way video conferencing system between the patient and the interpreter. However, the system must use a dedicated ISDN line, and therefore it is inflexible and not readily available. Therefore, the interpreting service can be provided only at sites that have an ISDN termination.
Hand-held and PC-based devices are available that use translation software to convert text from one language to another. However, in some instances, these devices are not suitable because they are difficult to use, they are inaccurate, they are able to process only written information, and they are very impersonal.